Ottawa needs to back up claims on human smuggling, critics say

Immigration Minister Jason Kenney said Thursday he recently received information that validates the government’s assertions that a migrant vessel intercepted in Indonesian waters this summer may have been bound for Canadian shores.

“Just as recently as last week, I was meeting with my Australian counterpart in Geneva and he said it was the Australian view that the (MV) Alicia was headed for Canada,” Kenney said in an interview. “That seems to be a fairly widespread view.”

Some critics, however, say the government needs to back up its claims with evidence and charge that the Tories seized on the incident to further a political agenda.

“I’m more than willing to place my faith in my elected officials if they convince me I need to be worried about something, but I’m very skeptical about them deliberately avoiding providing the evidence of that,” said Douglas Cannon, a Vancouver immigration lawyer who has represented a number of Tamils who arrived in Canada last year on another migrant ship, the MV Sun Sea.

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“Let us evaluate this for ourselves, particularly when there is overt political overtones.”

Cannon was alluding to the government’s controversial anti-human smuggling bill, which is scheduled to undergo further debate in the new year. The legislation proposes tough penalties for those who organize smuggling operations, as well as for asylum-seekers who pay them to come to Canada.

In July, Indonesian police intercepted the MV Alicia with 87 asylum-seekers from Sri Lanka onboard. At the time, reports overseas suggested the ship might have been headed for New Zealand.

But in a news release and in statements to reporters, Canadian officials said the ship may actually have been destined for Canada.

“This incident in Indonesian waters of a vessel believed to contain illegal migrants destined for Canada in a human smuggling operation underscores the need for Parliament to act in passing our anti-human smuggling legislation,” Kenney told reporters at the time.

But Cannon said if Kenney is going to use the interception of the vessel as a basis for why Canada should adopt new legislation, he needs to provide evidence of what the threat actually is.

“If a police officer announces publicly that residential break-and-enters are increasing and we need more funding to fight that, but he can’t actually give you any evidence of that for operational reasons, I would expect people to be cynical,” he said.

Ottawa political consultant Keith Beardsley, a former senior adviser to Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said Thursday there are possible sensitivities related to the case that prevent the government from talking.

However, he said, it is clear the government seized on the incident as a way to promote its anti-human smuggling bill. “Any government, it doesn’t matter which party, would do exactly the same thing,” he said.

And Beardsley, who published a column this summer suggesting the government had engaged in a bit of “fearmongering,” said he, too, was concerned with the vagueness of the information about where the boat was headed and who its passengers were.

“I’m fairly hard-line on immigration, but you still have to have facts,” he said. “You still have to, from a humanitarian viewpoint, at least make sure, ‘Are these legitimate refugees or not?’ ”

Kenney said Thursday the government was trying to be transparent to Canadians about the threat of smuggling. He added that it’s difficult to know for certain where a smuggling ship is headed because “we’re dealing with dodgy criminal networks who don’t publish formally their trip itineraries.”

Mitra Salima Suryono, a spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Jakarta, Indonesia, said in an email this week that 85 of the MV Alicia’s passengers registered as asylum-seekers with the agency and seven opted for voluntary repatriation to Sri Lanka.

The remaining 78 are being held in an immigration detention centre, waiting to be interviewed by UNHCR staff and to have their refugee claims assessed.